Valve’s big new gaming pack, The Orange Box, includes a stunning new kind of puzzle game called Portal. Portal is a non-linear puzzle platformer featuring M.C. Escher-like bending of space, and some of the most unique gameplay to hit gaming market in a long time.

Portal features Black Mesa’s newest research competitor- Aperture Sciences - creators of the aperture gun, a device capable of creating space-bending portals between almost any two points in space. It’s hard to describe the gameplay in words so check out Valve’s Portal page and view the trailers to try and wrap your head around it. Click through for Playfeed’s full thoughts on this fresh new gaming experience.

This week on XBox Live Arcade comes the anticipated and graphically enhanced arcade cult classic Super Street Fighter Puzzle HD Remix. In addition to upping the graphical fidelity on the game, Capcom has also rebalanced the game with the new X’ mode, although the original version will also be available. The game will cost 800 Microsoft Points.

On Wii‘s Virtual Console this week seems to be sequel week, with the Contra sequel Super C (previously available on XBox Live Arcade) for 500 Wii Points, the SNES role-playing classic Breath of Fire II for 800 Wii Points and the Sega Genesis version of Ghouls n’ Ghosts, the follow-up to Ghosts n’ Goblins for another 800 Wii Points.

People with virtual currency burning pixelated holes in their alternate reality pockets can check out the Xbox Live Arcade and the Wii Virtual Console this week for some new (or perhaps old) titles. The most exciting offerings this week look to be the Jeff Minter shooter Space Giraffe and the wonderful SNES classic, Super Metroid.

On the latest episode of its Full Moon Show Podcast, Insomniac Games has disclosed an official North American release date of October 23rd for Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. The game is the fifth installment of the popular action/platform series (okay, so Deadlocked was more of a multiplayer shooter), and first for the PS3. A real next-gen mascot platform game (movie licensed ones don’t count) has been a long time coming, but luckily we have Insomniac around to temporarily rescue us from the glut of dark and mature steroid-addled first person shooters.

Insomniac has promised that a PSN demo will arrive before the final game, but all we have as far as a timeframe is a painfully vague, “Near future.”

In the latest issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, senior producer on LittleBigPlanet, Pete Wilson, confirmed that LBP is going to be more than just a platformer.

It’s funny—I don’t think we actually mentioned this previously, but yes, we will certainly have enemies in the game; I think that’s a fundamental part of good gameplay,” said Wilson. “They will range from little robots that simply roam from left to right to spectacularly complex beasts that pose quite a challenge. We’ve recently built this big, huge giant, and, as with other objects in the game, he’s composed entirely of materials that you wouldn’t expect. He’s quite intimidating, and shows the possibility of what designers can create.

Sounds pretty sweet. If the game enables you to create enemies, then that throws another major dynamic into the mix.